'I think he's dead'

Sunday Star Times

When the globe-trotting speedboat Earthrace sunk a fishing boat near Guatemala, Kiwi documentary maker Ryan Heron was on board. He talks to Eloise Gibson about the appalling moment the crew realised they had killed a man, and what he believes really happened that night.

A massive noise, men tumbling out of bunks and a hollow, sick feeling is what Wanganui-born film-maker Ryan Heron remembers of the moment New Zealand environmental campaign boat Earthrace ploughed into a Guatemalan fishing skip.

It was just after midnight on March 18 only nine days after the crew left Barbados in a bid to break the world powerboat record by circumnavigating the globe in 65 days when the boat was shunted by a sudden impact.

It wasn't the first thing to go wrong: self-destructing parts and engine trouble on the biofuel-powered boat had already cost the crew precious time.

The boat's new propellers malfunctioned less than a day into the race, so instead of "race, refuel, go", the first stop was a slow limp into Panama to wait for new propellers.

And now a crash, 25km from the coast of Guatemala.

The sound was "like hitting something in your car", says 23-year-old Heron, who is back in Auckland making a documentary about his time on Earthrace. His footage from the minutes after the crash follows the strained faces of the crew as they stumble on deck and realise they have sunk a small shark-fishing vessel.

On board Earthrace were Heron, New Zealand skipper Pete Bethune, and two Americans sponsor David Stark and marine engineer Anthony Distefano, who was driving the boat when it crashed.

In the footage, Stark, a trained doctor, peers into the eyes of a pale, dripping fisherman the crew have pulled from the sea, checking for concussion. The man slumps on the deck, bleeding from a leg.

"Oh God," sobs Distefano, and Heron tries to pacify him from behind the camera: "Hey, hey," he says.

A second fisherman has also been hauled aboard, a bewildered but unhurt boy who looks barely out of his teens. He is asking for cigarettes.

"Tres hombres? Tres hombres?" someone asks him desperately. The boy nods. Bethune trains a spotlight on to the submerged fishing boat. His voice bellows into the dark: "Is there another guy?"

Then Bethune again: "I think he's dead."

Six months on, Heron is editing the footage on a laptop in the bedroom of a rambling Parnell flat. He thinks carefully about the events leading up to the crash.

"There were several factors involved as to why that boat was hit, and one of them was driver error," he says.

"But I feel that we were one qualified crew member short on that boat. There were only three of us that were fulltime crew."

Heron explains how, during the race, the crew took turns at driving the boat and doing chores. Each person did two hours of driving followed by four hours to eat, sleep and do whatever other tasks were required.

"But what happened during that day was that Anthony and Pete had been working on one of the engines that was having trouble, so they'd been slaving away in a hot engine bay for 12 hours, and I'd been driving for 12 hours."

Once the engine was fixed, everyone had to start their next shift without a break. Heron says Distefano would have been exhausted when he took the helm.

Keeping an eye on all the instrumentation and panels was hard, even on a normal shift.

"You've just got all these screens in front of you and then there's little dots of light that you have no idea how far away they are."

The fishing skip was also hard to see a Guatemalan navy officer later told the crew about 30 or 40 skips are sunk in the area by bigger vessels every year.

"It was a very small boat that sits just on the water, so it doesn't bounce back a strong radar signal... (and) their boat wasn't correctly lit," Heron said.

"But in saying that, I think that had Anthony not been exhausted and run ragged, I think he would have got it, for sure."

Maritime law requires anchored boats to display at least one all-round white light.

Bethune told Guatemalan authorities the skip had only a small red-and-white flashing light, which he described in a blog as "like something you'd find on a pushbike".

After the crash, the crew circled the spot for four hours looking for the missing fisherman. In the end, they abandoned the search, so they could get help for the critically injured fisherman.

For the next two months at sea, Heron woke in a panic every night. "I would wake up and think I was meant to be driving.

"I'd race out, but there'd be someone driving because it wasn't my shift."

For 10 days after the accident the crew were detained in Guatemala, awaiting a court hearing for Bethune as skipper, he was considered responsible for the boat.

Finally, a judge decided he would not be charged.

On their last day in Guatemala, Heron and Bethune met the dead man's family to apologise for the accident.

The driver, Distefano, was on a plane out of Guatemala before the 10-day detention was up as soon, in fact, as he was let off the boat.

"He said, `I'm not staying in Guatemala. They can try and extradite me or something if they want to put me in prison, but I'm leaving,"' says Heron.

"It wasn't an easy situation for anyone, but Anthony had it the worst because he was the one that was driving."

Heron had been snowboarding and working in Queenstown in 2004 when Bethune asked the South Seas film school graduate to join Earthrace as a volunteer to film the building of the biofuelled powerboat. He had already made a promotional clip for the boat a year earlier, as an environmentally conscious student.

Bethune, a former oil exploration engineer who describes himself as an "unusual greenie", was using his own and sponsors' money to build a flagship for alternative fuel. He wanted to race the boat around the world to promote biofuels.

For Heron, an outdoorsy 20-year-old, who loved to travel but had never been on the open sea, the chance to make his own documentary was too good to turn down. He used his savings and borrowed money from his grandmother to buy camera equipment.

Bethune planned to build the boat in six months, then tour New Zealand and the United States promoting renewable fuels and showing curious visitors the futuristic-looking boat, attracting sponsors as they went.

But the boat went half a million dollars over budget and took 15 months to build.

"So it was like, f---, now I'm 15 months of my life into this project and we're only just launching the boat," said Heron.

Life on board was cramped and uncomfortable. Features such as cushioning and air-conditioning would have slowed it down, and, besides, money was scarce.

One crew member, fed up with 40C heat at the helm, got off in Mexico the very first port of his leg. Most volunteers lasted between two weeks and six months. Heron was with the project three years, filming the building, the tour and, finally, the record attempt.

"You're not getting any pay, you're working seven days a week, and sometimes it was just really hard," says Heron.

Times might have been tough, but Heron quickly became the trusted collaborator of Bethune, who says Heron's casual, trackpants-and-a- T-shirt dress code belies the rigorous worker underneath.

"When you meet him he comes across as a bit of a slob, you know, six inches of butt-crack showing, but it's deceptive.

"He's a very good organiser and quite meticulous. Of all the crew members I've had, I'd trust him at night more than anyone else."

On June 1, a crack in the hull forced Bethune to abandon the race in Spain. Heron was on a plane within hours.

"I went back to the hotel and booked a flight for London and I was gone the next morning."

What if Earthrace had kept going? "For sure I would have stayed."

Heron says if Earthrace finds funding for another record attempt next year, he'll be back on board. It has been reported that British entrepreneur and biofuels backer Sir Richard Branson is interested in supporting the next bid after a ride in the boat in the UK last month, but no deal has yet been done.

Meanwhile, Heron is working as a freelance cameraman and editing the Earthrace documentary when he can.

The documentary needs tens of thousands of dollars' worth of editing and post-production before he can approach a distributor to sell it for him.

He still doesn't quite know how he will pay for it, but the Earthrace experience ("it was very hand to mouth") has taught him to have faith that the money will come.

As for the record attempt, Heron says the man who died in Guatemala has put things into perspective for him.

"It's a pretty dangerous undertaking doing something like that, and someone did die during it.

"So just to come out alive, and for the people I know well to be alive, that's kind of a success."